Were I to Make a Whore of My Soul

My first apartment was taken with two friends, the second semester of our freshman year at college. It was just down the street from the playhouse where we all three worked. Neither the building nor the neighborhood was of the best, but these quarters were what we could afford. We were young and could walk up seven, eight or more flights without breathlessness. If the streets were dangerous after dark, and the lobby often unlit, we moved through the gloom will all the arrogance of youth, secure in our immortality. We were burgled of our few possessions at least one, suffered bugs, broken radiators and a riotous party or two that lost us a bedroom door, somehow, though we none of us could quite remember it going. When one of my roommates was drunk, he would bring me stolen stop signs. When the other had a boyfriend or a trick over, which was all too frequently, I vacated the bottom bunk and slept on the sofa in the living room, under the Erte poster.

We all had a lovely time.

Our building was the survivor of twins. Just opposite was another just like ours, only burned out. This did not prevent occupancy though. Various squatters and junkies lived in the rooms that hadn't burned. The whores that worked the stroll on our block were all black amazons; no girl seemingly under seven feet, with hair and heels. I was too simple a country boy to appreciate that any of these ladies might in fact be gentlemen, or some compromise between. This was eventually explained to me. I continued polite and they proved friendly enough, at least to me. My roommate with the frequent visitors caused some controversy among the working girls, who resented what they quite rightly saw as unfair amateur competition. They were not nice to my friend.

Up the street from us, in a boarding house, lived three retarded ladies -- so we described them then, in a less enlightened and or euphemistic time. They rode the bus together to the jobs they worked together, went to Mass together and came home. One night, as a roommate and I came home from our shift ushering at the playhouse, these ladies were robbed, their purses snatched. We gave chase to the thieves, and my roommate was punched in the throat before the miscreants jumped in a car and escaped. The ladies were terrified and very upset to have lost their purses, in each of which had been little more than a bus-pass and a rosary. When the working girls on the block heard of this crime, and recognized the victims, they not only gathered a collection among themselves, but sent a designated representative who bought three new bus-passes and three lovely new rosaries to replace those that had been snatched. Sadly, the frightened little ladies would not open their door to the beneficent amazons, who then required us to deliver their gifts. They asked no thanks, though I know their interactions with these particular neighbors improved thereafter, once the gifts were explained. I don't know that the amazons minded nearly so much as they protested about having clients frightened away by the loud greetings of three plump, elderly ladies. It wasn't like the ladies to be out at the peak hours for their neighbor's business anyway.

I thought of the amazons at work the other day. In front of the bookstore, every day, in fair weather and foul, winter and summer, passersby are subjected to daily solicitation, not from respectable prostitutes, but from kids shilling various causes, charities and political groups. It is not too much to say, I would rather real whores roamed these streets. To be met every day with the aggressive, nay, relentless attentions of bright-eyed youngsters with binders and clipboards, trained to feign recognition and greet complete strangers as if they were long lost friends, is far worse than being offered "a party" by a seven foot drag with a knife in her purse. True whores have no time for the disinterested and move quickly on to likelier prospects. These little demons on The Ave. will walk with one the length of the block, insisting they want "just a minute" of one's time. They will take the arm of any polite soul fool enough to hesitate or return a smile. I've watched them corner every description of innocent, bullying and cajoling and insisting that "no commitment" is required, before pitching the contract they've been paid to pitch.

Years ago, I worked a few voter registration tables and the like. We were instructed to be friendly, to regularly announce our purpose, often as not to the thin air, and to greet folks warmly even when they hurried by and into the grocery store or shoe shop behind us. We never, to my recollection, chased anyone, asked them, as I have been asked by the charity shills, why they "didn't want to save ---," the children, civil rights, or the planet. I may not have registered that many voters or returned my petitions heavy with signatures, but neither did I harangue old women in the street or attack naive teenagers for their evident lack of social responsibility.

The organizations that use these pugnacious puppies to solicit membership and donations would like the public to think that the evident enthusiasm of these cretins comes from a fervent belief. This is not so. The brats seen today working to "save gay marriage in California" will be back tomorrow, in a differently stitched vest, to "feed the hungry babies," and again, the day after, to "save responsible logging." These little bullies work not for a cause, but from the back of a van. They are sent out cynically from boiler-rooms, with memorized scripts, and with no more conviction than the worst actors in a cheap commercial.

These kids may not be as awful as their job, but what they do can not be good for them. I would pity them, some of them anyway, if they did it somewhere other than the threshold I have to cross every day. As for their employers, Dante could not invent an appropriate circle of Hell. As for the organizations that hire such scum, I can not imagine their fundraising really requires the corruption of youth and the harassment of the general public.

I know something of the real charity of whores. It is a nobler thing than whoring for charity, of that I am sure.